Artistic director Timothy Sheader enjoys
programming work in Regent’s Park which is not merely adventurous but
seems intended to test how incongruous things can get before imploding.
Earlier this summer, audiences entered the sylvan setting to see a
crashed jet airliner, the set for Lord Of The Flies;
this time, painted forecloths are torn down to reveal a stage dominated
by the enormous gibbet of Tyburn. William Dudley’s design is entirely
Tyburnesque: one of a pair of gigantic tumbrels is first seen as the
bed in which Macheath and Polly Peachum lie entwined, and later
transforms into one wall of the cell in which the bandit lord is
imprisoned.

A sense of period vigour
pervades Lucy Bailey’s production. Far from modishly updating some or
all of the nearly 70 tunes in John Gay’s 1728 ballad opera , musical
director Roddy Skeaping has arranged them for 18th-century
instrumentation, as played by his ensemble the City Waites. This was
intended by Gay to be the antithesis of Italianate grand opera and so,
whilst there are some sweet voices to be heard (principally Flora
Spencer-Longhurst as Polly), there are more which make up in energy
what they lack in dextrousness around the archaic melodic progressions.
Jasper Britton relishes bellowing his lines as Peachum and imbues his
songs with the same spirit; after the interval, when Phil Daniels
enters and basically Phil Danielses as the gaoler Lockit, one
half-expects his numbers to be punctuated with an occasional cry of
“Parklife!”

The more populous scenes
seethe with a Hogarthian grotesque vitality; Terry King has
choreographed some nifty brawls among the male and female underworld
groups, and also a first-rate catfight as Lucky Lockit and Polly
Peachum vie for Macheath’s affections. When a (non-production) bat
wheels overhead, it seems entirely in keeping with the tone of the
piece; likewise when that gallows is finally pressed into use for a
closing celebratory dance that threatens to become a hemp fandango as,
one by one, several of the company are dragged off the forestage and
strung up. Their work at Shakespeare’s Globe has shown that Bailey and
Dudley are unafraid to tackle open-air spaces head-on with audaciously
tone-changing visual concepts, and once again their chutzpah pays off
with this fine if unexpected slice of Regent’s Parklife.